This is looking awesome.
You're still stick to Mental Ray? This mutalisk is great, and SSS is looking awesome. Man... 4 minutes is really long for this (great) type of quality.
Can't wait to see it done!

When you will be making a video tutorial on special effects, passes and post production in 3DS Max and AE?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Freespace-3DT

Here's a warp-in clip where a fleet of Confederate Battlecruisers ( that need to be added to the shot ) arrive at Korhal,

Looks great man!
I think you might need more blurriness in there, and better speed.
Have you tried Afterburn atmospheric? It's basically same as max volume fog, but it allows you to put any procedural map for the density which gives unlimited variations (and it's great for making a warp effects). Allan Mckay had few great tutorial for that.

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Now it's the time to be extreme!

Thanks man, yeah I'm sticking to Mental Ray for the awesome shaders and lighting it has. I still use Scanline for lots of passes like volumetrics, energy, space, planets, etc.

A tutorial? I don't know what to tutorial about. Let me know if there's something in particular you'd like to know.

Regardind the warp scene, I have actually tried Afterburn volume fog for this scene but I wasn't very pleased with the results for some reason, so I switched to good old standard volume fog. There are around seven passes for the effects in the warp and that gave me huge freedom to mess around with them in post. Here's the finished warp scene, it's got some added intensity for speed due to a subtle camera shake at the beginning.

A tutorial? I don't know what to tutorial about. Let me know if there's something in particular you'd like to know.

Well... for example, a video tutorial on how you create scene from the beginning (except modeling and texturing), how do you export it to passes, and how you join and color correct passes in After Effects (and also effects) until you got a finished shot.
I guess you don't have the time for that, but it would be great if you find it sometime.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Freespace-3DT

Here's a Scourge for ya.

This is sick.
Great job Freespace!

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Now it's the time to be extreme!

one thing i would change with the warp in, is the speed at which the battlecruiser roll. these things are massive, i mean HUGE. as a result, they wont turn that quickly, even in space. they would break up into a lot of little pieces.

that would really mess up your game balance your units cant turns without dying ^^

bobi: Wow, thanks for taking the time to do that. I do however like how it currently looks like and I want to move on with the cinematic ( got 50% left to do! ). I also didn't put enough details on those cruisers for a closer peek.

If you're curious about it, I will talk about my workflow in the coming days. Sure.

Tank[NL]: You bring a good point, my friend. However, I bring two points to counter this particular case, in the name of a fun debate.
1. It looks cool that they move like that, otherwise they would actually be moving linearly, perfectly still from a following camera's point of view. And that's not fun.
2. Scientifically speaking ( NERD MODE activated ), in order to travel through warpspace, an object needs to defend itself from the onslaught of incredible force and from the theory of relativity. So BattleCruisers form an innertial nullifier around themselves, essentially a protective bubble that separate them in their own field where the ridiculous rigor of faster-than-light travel and other problems such as mass do not apply. ( / NERD MODE )

Wow so many updates since I last visited this thread. I tried out the Scatter compound object and it was perfectly made for rocks and gravel : I also saw the animation in your website. Really darn excellent. Are you using SSS shaders on your Zerg models?

you cant see the bubble and even if you could people wont know what the hell it is. also, fast movement makes the cruisers look smaller, more like fighters. it detracts from their hugeness.

you've got the beta, right? you've seen that bad@ss cruiser in the background, yes?

put the camera right underneath one of the cruisers, have some turrets or something move around and other cruisers in the foreground. the size of the ships will be more then apparent and it'll looks awesome.

Well... for example, a video tutorial on how you create scene from the beginning (except modeling and texturing), how do you export it to passes, and how you join and color correct passes in After Effects (and also effects) until you got a finished shot.

Yes please. I'd like to learn that very much. I already know how to render the characters, props, trees, backgrounds separately. The problem is that I don't know how to work with rendering elements (or render passes) and how to composite them correctly in AE.

SgtHK: Glad to hear you've found Scatter useful. Yes, I'm using Mental Ray's fast SSS skin shader for the zerg. It's an awesome shader, once you get a hold of it.

Tank[NL]: Well I didn't model sufficient details for the cruisers for such a close-up as the Hyperion gets in the beta menu. I want to move on with the cinematic, otherwise I'm not gonna make it before the release of SC2.

SgtHK & Tank[NL]:

The way I use passes is the following:

I always manage my scenes with max's Layers function. I have layers for terrain, characters, rigs, props, cameras & lights, etc. This way you can quickly access exactly what you want from your scene in a couple of clicks, and you can also set global parameters (like visibility) extremely fast for sets of objects.

I don't really use the Render Elements feature (diffuse, specular, etc ) except for the Z-Depth element and sometimes a reflection/specular pass (so I can increase reflections on objects in post). With the Z-Depth I can add Depth of Field on post production.

What I do for rendering out passes, is take a character layer and render just that (output to Tga with Alpha, of course), while everything else will be Not Visible to Camera. This means everything leaves a shadow or is reflected on the character.

Then the same applies for other passes, like terrain. Terrain will need the character to leave shadows on it, so the character layer will be Not Visible to Camera this time, thus projecting shadows on the terrain when rendering the terrain pass.

Hi all, I'm new to the 3dtotal forums(first post here!). Freespace asked me to drop by and post post pictures of my contribution to "Final Metamorphosis." So far I've modeled a Protoss carrier based on this amazing concept by Peter Lee.

Regarding the Scourge I think the specularity looks way cool . Shinyy... But it seems you accomplished it better on the zergling, the scourge looked a bit plastic perhaps...

Regarding the Battlecruisers I'd like to take a look at how blizzard did it... You guys remember the cinematic where two guys battled a bunch of zerg inside a long dark trench?? Think of how massive and slow the cruisers were there... They are frigging massive! Would really want to see something similar to that =).

Cheerios!

__________________What does the doctor ordain today?
- Hmm... What about a shot... full of ideas!